Pothook
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 An S-shaped iron hook used to suspend a cooking pot over a fire.
- 2 an S-shaped hook to suspend a pot over a fire wordnet
- 3 A crooked stroke in writing; a scrawl.
"An indescribable character of faded gentility that attached to the house I sought, and made it unlike all the other houses in the street—though they were all built on one monotonous pattern, and looked like the early copies of a blundering boy who was learning to make houses, and had not yet got out of his cramped brick-and-mortar pothooks—reminded me still more of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber."
Example
More examples"An indescribable character of faded gentility that attached to the house I sought, and made it unlike all the other houses in the street—though they were all built on one monotonous pattern, and looked like the early copies of a blundering boy who was learning to make houses, and had not yet got out of his cramped brick-and-mortar pothooks—reminded me still more of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber."
Etymology
From pot + hook.
Related phrases
More for "pothook"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.